Nokia and SoftBank to trial AI-RAN in live commercial network
Nokia and SoftBank will trial AI-RAN in SoftBank’s commercial network in Japan in 2027, under commercial traffic conditions. The trial will run Nokia’s RAN software on SoftBank’s own platform, built on Nvidia hardware.
AI-RAN means running mobile network radio processing and AI workloads on the same computing platform. In the trial, Nokia’s anyRAN Cloud RAN software will run on AITRAS, SoftBank’s AI-RAN platform, using Nvidia's Aerial RAN Computer, according to a press release from Nokia. The hardware combines an Nvidia Grace CPU, an RTX PRO 4500 GPU and ConnectX-8 networking.
“By bringing AI and RAN workloads onto common, programmable infrastructure, AI-RAN has the potential to unlock new levels of spectral efficiency while providing the distributed intelligence needed to support physical AI,” says Pallavi Mahajan, Chief Technology and AI Officer at Nokia.
For Nokia, the trial means taking AI-RAN from the lab towards real-world deployment. It will also show that the company’s RAN software can run on an operator’s own platform rather than only on Nokia’s own hardware. Nokia’s MantaRay network management system will be integrated with the AITRAS Orchestrator, which allocates computing resources between AI and RAN workloads. The aim is to see whether this can be done while still meeting carrier-grade requirements for the radio network.
“We will integrate Nokia’s AI-native anyRAN into our AITRAS platform as its RAN component, with the AITRAS Orchestrator working in coordination with Nokia’s RAN and MantaRay,” says Ryuji Wakikawa, Senior Vice President and CTO at SoftBank.
The companies have not said how many sites the trial will cover, where in Japan it will take place or when in 2027 it will start.
